Afro-Latino Memories and Grounds of Resistance, from Nueva Granada to the Age of Obama

Session Submission Type: Panel Session

Abstract

This panel explores the myriad ways that people of African descent in the U.S., Hispanophone Caribbean, and Latin America have defied racial purity and classification schemes, used the legal system to inscribe histories of resistance in national archives, sustained African religious practices as transgenerational and transnational forms of emotional healing, and developed literary tropes to counter the traumatizing silences that protect and perpetuate the discourse of white supremacy. Panelist Angélica María Sánchez Barona examines the role art and sculpture played in structuring, sanctioning, and maintaining racial discourses and divisions in the late colonial Viceroyalty of Nueva Granada. María Ximena Abello Hurtado explores how enslaved Black women like Rosa de Herrera pursued their freedom in the colonial courts of Nueva Granada. Isabel Espinal uses egun, the Santería concept of ‘the Ancestors,’ as a trope to explicate instances of transgenerational and transnational healing in Nelly Rosario’s Song of the Water Saints, Annecy Báez’s My Daughter’s Eyes, and Ana Maurine Lara’s Erzulie’s Skirt. Trent Masiki, the final panelist, analyzes the relationships between fukú americanus, tíguersimo, and the history of sexual trauma in the life of Ramon “Yunior” de Las Casas, Junot Diaz’s alter ego and the central protagonist of Drown, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, and This Is How You Lose Her.

Sub Unit

• 101st Annual Meeting and Conference of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History

Chair

• Agustín Lao Montes, Associate Professor of Sociology, UMASS Amherst

Individual Presentations

• The Art of Racial Classification in Late Colonial Nueva Granada - Angélica María Sánchez Barona, Masters Student in Art History at Pennsylvania State University

• Self-emancipation in the Archive: Rosa de Herrera and the Black Female Counter-Histories of Nueva Granada, 1749 to 1819. - María Ximena Abello Hurtado, Afro-American Studies, UMass-Amherst

• Afro-syncretic Spirituality as Critical Theory: Egun and Transgenerational Healing in Song of the Water Saints, My Daughter’s Eyes, and Erzulie’s Skirt. - Isabel Espinal, PhD Candidate in American Studies & Librarian for Afro American Studies, UMass Amherst

• Predators, Doppelgangers, and the Littoral Zone of Tíguersimo in “Drown” and “Miss Lora.” - Trent Masiki, PhD Candidate in Afro-American Studies, UMass-Amherst

Commentator

• ASALH Audience, .